Caskaway: Neil Macleod Mathieson's desert island drams

Caskaway: Neil Macleod Mathieson's desert island drams

We send Neil Macleod Mathieson, whisky maker for Mossburn and Torabhaig, off to our desert island and ask which five drams are coming with him

Caskaway | 18 Oct 2024 | By Lucy Schofield

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For Neil Macleod Mathieson, it all began with a fountain pen, piece of paper, and a spark of interest. While studying accountancy, law, and economics, he wrote to distilleries, looking to join the spirits industry. He ended up in a shed in Gascony, France, distilling Armangac on an ambulant still. He was fascinated, and the smells left an “indelible mark”, he says. In the 1990s he started independent bottling and blending house Mossburn Distillers, and in 2017 opened his first distillery, Torabhaig, on the Isle of Skye. As well as Torabhaig, Mossburn runs Reivers Distillery in the Scottish Borders. Neil regularly travels from his London home to Mossburn’s distilleries and projects in Scotland, Japan, and the US.

 

Whisky #1

Torabhaig

Allt Glean Batch Strength

The biggest whisky for us was obviously our first cask strength from Torabhaig, the Allt Glean cask strength, and that’s because of the age we are, which is just short of eight. The liquid suits the smoke, the integration of the cast extracts we’ve got, and our delicate florality. So, once I’ve opened the distillery and taken it through its nascent years, that has to be the first on my list. It might be youthful and simple, but it’s a little bit like the distilling team we’ve got up there. It’s very honest, and it’s quite vibrant in its own way.

 

Whisky #2

Johnnie Walker

Blue Label

If I’m going to choose that as my first, I have to choose something that’s a great deal more complicated for my second. So that would be Johnnie Walker Blue because that must be the height of artistry in the blending world. The only thing I think about when I drink that is that they forgive my one block of ice because it’s a great contemplative whisky. The good thing is also because it’s a blend, it matches a lot of musical moods. So you can make Walker Blue match a lot of things in your mind, whereas some whiskies aren’t quite so easy. It’s simply that the complexity in it can go with jazz, blues, anything. Music comes into it a lot because once you start to contemplate the whisky, there’s an easy route to help you understand that, and that’s put music on and relax.

 

Whisky #3

Compass Box

Flaming Heart

If the Johnnie Walker Blue isn’t available, I harken back to an early bottle of Flaming Heart. I got together with John [Glaser] early in his Compass Box career, and he kindly gave me bottles of all his early issues, which I very naughtily took home and drank one by one. It was never an outright smoky whisky. You had to tease the smoke out of it, then it had crisp smoke. I always thought that was a very good drink.

 

Whisky #4

Clynelish Reserve

Game of Thrones House Tyrell

As a fourth whisky, I would choose Clynelish because we bottled some back in the 1990s, and we used to use it in blending. But my last bottle was from the Game of Thrones series, and it was slightly more tropical than usual, with perhaps an edge more vanilla, so it might have been older than the age we used to use, which was six or seven. But I always thought that it was a very vivacious, zesty product. That bottle went down extraordinarily well. Empty now, unfortunately… but I thought that was a very nice bottle.

 

Whisky #5

Rittenhouse Rye

Bottled in Bond

Cocktail-wise, my go-to for something like a Manhattan would be Rittenhouse Rye, the Bottled in Bond version, because for the past 20 years I’ve always had a bottle of rye hanging around, and it’s just my go-to rye. It’s got all the flavour I want from an American whiskey. It holds its own in a mixed drink. It’s got that slightly higher strength, but it’s quite bold rye, even though I understand that the grain mix isn’t overly rye heavy, but I think it’s quite well forward.

 

Luxury Item

Music and books

Because of all the flying I do to our various distilleries, the one invaluable item is a digital carrier of books and music, so that would be my luxury item. I suppose you’d have to have a connection to the to the internet as well. I carry so much music. I still have an old iPod, but they’re no longer big enough for all the music that I have, and I still carry a Kindle, and use my telephone for anything else. You spend so much time on the road and talking to your whisky friends that sometimes you don’t need company, and the music and the books work for that. So I suppose on your deserted island where you’re not offered company, the music and books would take you a long way to keeping yourself entertained. 

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